---
layout: post
permalink: beta-4-2/
title: 'Rainmeter 4.2 Beta'
---
<div class="release-notes">
	<div class="description">
		<h1 class="text-center">Rainmeter 4.2</h1>
		<hr>
		<p>The following are the changes for the 4.2 beta version of Rainmeter. You can safely install the new 4.2 beta version right over top of your existing Rainmeter 4.1 or earlier installation, and nothing you have done will be lost or changed. There is never any need to uninstall earlier versions of Rainmeter to use the newest version.</p>
		<p><b>Note:</b> As of Rainmeter 4.0, Windows XP and Windows Vista are no longer supported by the application.</p>
	</div>
	<div class="changelog">
		<h2>Changes in Rainmeter Beta 4.2</h2>
		<hr>
		<p>Additional details on important changes during the beta cycle can always be found at <a href="https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewforum.php?f=122">Change Announcements</a>.</p>
		
		<p class="revision"><b>July 3, 2018 - Revision 3110</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-release">RC2</span><b>4.2 Release Candidate 2</b></li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Usage Monitor plugin:</b> Additional error trapping and logging.</li>
		</ul>

		<p class="revision"><b>July 1, 2018 - Revision 3108</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-release">RC1</span><b>4.2 Release Candidate 1</b></li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Usage Monitor plugin:</b> Added some error trapping and logging to address rare cases where the perfomon data is not correctly returned for one update cycle, which could crash Rainmeter.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Rainmeter:</b> Added some error trapping and logging to address rare cases where the initial check for Rainmeter version updates when the computer is first started could crash Rainmeter if the computer's network configuration was not yet complete.</li>			
		</ul>
		
		<p class="revision"><b>June 23, 2018 - Revision 3104</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>UsageMonitor plugin:</b> Corrected a bug caused in r3101.</li>
		</ul>

		<p class="revision"><b>June 23, 2018 - Revision 3101</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>UsageMonitor plugin:</b> Fixed an issue where the plugin would fail when Windows is using the French language, due to a conflict bug in the counters stored in perfmon for this language. This should also address any other languages that may have a similar problem in the future.</li>
		</ul>
		
		<p class="revision"><b>June 22, 2018 - Revision 3097</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Rainmeter:</b> Added the full path to the currently running skin .ini file to the hidden window "title" of the config window. This is in support of plugins that may be written to use SendMessage() to detect if a particular config is running, and if so, to use the window title to retrieve the "variant" name of the running skin.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Languages:</b> Updated the Chinese Traditional language localizations.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>Rainmeter:</b> Corrected an issue where if Rainmeter was terminated, either due to a crash, or by using Task Manager, the Notification Area icon for Rainmeter would not be removed, and multiple "ghost" icons could result until you moved the cursor over them.</li>
		</ul>
		
		<p class="revision"><b>June 15, 2018 - Revision 3088</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-added">Added</span><b>Languages:</b> Added Arabic to supported localization languages.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Rainmeter:</b> Changed the file encoding of Rainmeter.ini from ANSI to UTF-16 LE (Unicode). Existing installations will be converted if needed when Rainmeter is started or Layouts are loaded. Details and an important note about backwards compatibility are at <a href="https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?p=149595#p149595">Change Announcements</a></li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>FileView plugin:</b> Relative paths are now supported with the ContextMenu command.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Manage dialog:</b> Removed the "Archive plugins to @Vault" option in the Settings dialog. This is not something most users will want to change.<br/><br/>Note: This can still be controlled if desired, by using the following in Rainmeter.data:<br/><code>[SkinInstaller]</code><br/><code>ArchivePlugins=0/1</code></li>
		</ul>
		
		<p class="revision"><b>June 1, 2018 - Revision 3074</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Languages:</b> Updated the Korean language localizations.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>NowPlaying:</b> Corrected a problem with using the latest version of Spotify with NowPlaying.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>NowPlaying:</b> Corrected an issue with the "rating" feature when using iTunes with NowPlaying.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> Fixed a small, slow memory leak with the plugin.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> Corrected some problems when disabling and enabling a measure using the plugin.</li>
		</ul>

		<p class="revision"><b>May 13, 2018 - Revision 3064</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-added">Added</span><b>Bangs:</b> Added several new bangs to allow "disabling" and "enabling" mouse actions on meters or the skin background. Documentation at <a href="https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual-beta/bangs/#MouseAction">Mouse Action state bangs</a>.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>About dialog:</b> Changed the About / Version dialog to add the version number for Windows 10 (e.g. 1709, 1803) and the language and language code number currently being used in both Rainmeter and Windows. (e.g. English (1033)) Changed the references to the various paths and the Rainmeter.ini file to be clickable links.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> Added <code>Index=-1</code> to return the "average" of the instances of a counter, instead of the "sum total". The string value returned when this is used is now <code>Average</code> instead of <code>Total</code>.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> Improved logging when <code>Percent=1</code> is incorrectly used.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Languages:</b> Updated the Russian language localizations.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>Mouse scroll actions:</b> Fixed a bug where the detection of mouse scrolling would not be reset between two skins when the skins were "touching".</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> Corrected an issue where the string value returned by the measure would continue to update when <code>Disabled</code> or <code>Paused</code> was used on the measure.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> Corrected an issue where a collision with the update of the plugin at the same time as the update of perfmon could cause incorrect values, or the string value not matching the number value.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> Corrected a problem where floating point number imprecision could result in a percentage being higher than 100%.</li>
		</ul>
			
		<p class="revision"><b>May 1, 2018 - Revision 3048</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> Blacklist and Whitelist have been changed to use the <code>|</code> (pipe) character as the separator, instead of <code>,</code> (comma).</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> Forced <code>Alias=GPU</code> and all measures where <code>Percent=1</code> is used to set a MaxValue of 100 on the measure.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> A problem with a particular counter in a category no longer will cause the entire category to fail to be read.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> If <code>Percent=1</code> is incorrectly used with an counter that has no _Total instance, the actual value will be returned instead of zero.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> Corrected a possible crash with measures that had PID translation automatically turned on such as <code>Alias=GPU</code>.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> Corrected an issue with <code>PIDToName</code> when used with languages other than English.</li>
		</ul>
		
		<p class="revision"><b>April 26, 2018 - Revision 3043</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-added">Added</span><b>UsageMonitor:</b> Added new UsageMonitor plugin to interact with the Windows Performance Monitor. This plugin will deprecate the existing AdvancedCPU and PerfMon plugins, and should be used in place of them going forward. Documentation for this new plugin is at <a href="https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual-beta/plugins/usagemonitor/">UsageMonitor</a>.</li>
		</ul>
		<p class="revision"><b>April 19, 2018 - Revision 3040</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Languages:</b> Updated the Malay, Chinese Simplified, and Japanese localizations.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Rainmeter:</b> Prevent a skin from updating as it is in the process of closing, which could potentially crash.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>Skin Installer:</b> Corrected a design flaw where the skin installer could extract the wrong plugin .dll file(s) from a .rmskin when evaluating the version of a plugin.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>Variables:</b> Corrected a bug when *escaping* nested variables.</li>
		</ul>
			
		<p class="revision"><b>February 9, 2018 - Revision 3029</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-added">Added</span><b>InputText:</b> Added support for <code>InputNumber</code> and <code>InputLimit</code> as inline command overrides.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Meter:</b> Fixed a rare bug causing Padding to not be included in the meter's W/H if the values for both padding and W/H were equal.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Languages:</b> Updated the PortugueseBrazil, Ukrainian, and Indonesian languages.</li>
		</ul>
		
		<p class="revision"><b>December 20, 2017 - Revision 3018</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Rainmeter:</b> The <a href="https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual-beta/distributing-skins/vault-folder/">@Vault\Plugins</a> folder will now be automatically created if it does not exist when Rainmeter starts.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Rainmeter:</b> The <a href="https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual-beta/distributing-skins/vault-folder/">@Vault\Plugins</a> folder will no longer be scanned and treated as a normal skins folder in the config list in Manage.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Languages:</b> Updated the Spanish Modern localizations.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>AudioLevel Plugin:</b> Corrected a bug that was not properly calculating a "device timeout" value.</li>
		</ul>

		<p class="revision"><b>December 13, 2017 - Revision 3011</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-added">Added</span><b>Rainmeter:</b> Added support for @Vault folder. See <a href="https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual-beta/distributing-skins/vault-folder/">@Vault Folder</a> for details.</li>
		</ul>

		<p class="revision"><b>December 11, 2017 - Revision 3004</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-added">Added</span><b>SysInfo:</b> Added a new <code>USER_LOGONTIME</code> SysInfoType value to the <a href="https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual-beta/plugins/sysinfo/#SysInfoType">SysInfo plugin</a>. This is a timestamp number (number of seconds since January 1, 1601) reflecting the date and time the current user account logged onto Windows. Use with a <a href="https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/measures/time/">Time measure</a> to get a formatted string of the date/time, or subtract from the current time and use with an <a href="https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/measures/uptime/">Uptime measure</a> to get a formatted string of the elapsed time.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>NowPlaying:</b> Improved CPU usage when using the latest versions of the iTunes player.</li>
		</ul>

		<p class="revision"><b>November 19, 2017 - Revision 3001</b></p>
		<ul>
			<li><span class="badge badge-changed">Changed</span><b>Languages:</b> Updated the Cyrillic Serbian, Latin Serbian, and Ukrainian localizations.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>NowPlaying:</b> Corrected some issues when using the latest versions of the iTunes player.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>Rainmeter:</b> Fixed an issue where an undefined variable used as a bang sequence in an action would create an endless loop and crash Rainmeter.</li>
			<li><span class="badge badge-fixed">Fixed</span><b>Lua scripting:</b> Corrected an issue where an error in an external library loaded with <code>dofile()</code> could return the wrong file and line number in the error log.</li>
		</ul>

	</div>
</div>
